Part 1 (2/2)

”That's right,” Dawn added, pointing to the bottom of the poster. ”See? They're taking up a collection to raise money to move him to a real zoo.”

Now my vision was definitely blurred. (Once I start, it's hard to stop.) I dug in my purse for some money. ”I'll give Babar some- thing. Here's a dollar and thirty-three cents.”

Logan held a dollar bill in the air. 'I'll chip in a dollar.”

Dawn emptied her entire coin purse in the palm of my hand. ”That's all I can find. But Babar can have it.”

As the movie line pushed forward/1 stepped out. I raced inside the candy store and found a small can marked, Money for Babar, sitting on the counter beside the cash register. I stuffed in the dollars and change as fast as I could, then hurried to join my friends, who had just reached the ticket window.

'Teel better?” Logan asked as he handed us our movie tickets.

I nodded. ”A little. But I'd feel a lot better if I knew Babar was leaving that awful place.”

We found three seats in the middle of the theater. Logan, great guy that he is, bought popcorn and soft drinks for Dawn and me. Soon the lights went down and the opening credits began to roll. It was hard to concentrate on the movie, though. All I could think of was that sad little elephant's face. I knew I wanted to do more than drop a few coins in a can, and hope for the best. But what?

The Baby-sitters Club! Of course! We could make freeing Babar a dub effort. It would be a great community service and our charges would love it. I decided to talk to the members of the BSC on Monday.

I tossed another big handful of popcorn in my mouth and leaned back comfortably in my seat. When Logan took my hand and gave it a squeeze, I gave him a big smile. Now that I'd come up with a way to help free Babar, I could finally enjoy the movie.

Chapter 2.

”He kind of looks like Dumbo,” Claudia Kis.h.i.+ said, examining the elephant's photograph.

It was Monday afternoon and I had brought a Free Babar poster to our Baby-sitters Club meeting to show the rest of the members.

Kristy Thomas, our dub president and my other best friend, jumped on the idea. ”The BSC could do a lot to help free Babar,” she said, leaning back in the director's chair that she always sits in during dub meetings. ”If you guys want, we can organize the kids and help spread the word. Maybe we can even do a few projects to help raise money for Babar.”

I love it when Kristy gets exdted about a project. She puts herself one hundred percent behind it and makes it happen.

Take the Baby-sitters dub, one of her greatest ideas of all time. She came up with the idea to form the dub while sitting in her kitchen one day, listening to her mom try to find a baby-sitter. You see, Kristy's father walked out on her family when Kristy was six and never looked back. That left Kristy's mom to work and raise four kids. Anyway, on that afternoon last year, Mrs. Thomas (that was her name then) made phone call after phone call trying to find someone to take care of David Michael, Kristy's younger brother (he's seven and a half now).

That's when the great idea hit Kristy like a bolt out of the blue.

Why not form a club consisting of responsible, experienced sitters? Parents could make one call, to the club, and reach a whole bunch of good sitters at once. Brilliant, huh?

In the beginning, there were only four of us - me, Kristy, Claudia, and Stacey McGill. Claudia, who is a fantastic artist, designed our fliers and the dub was on its way. We decided to meet three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from five-thirty to six in Claud's room.

Kristy and I used to live across the street from Claudia on Bradford Court. That's all changed now. I already told you that my dad married Sharon and we moved into their farmhouse. Well, Kristy's mom married Watson Brewer (a genuine millionaire) and Kristy and her three brothers - Charlie, age seventeen, Sam, age fifteen, and David Michael - moved into his big beautiful mansion on the other side of town.

Watson has two kids from his first marriage, seven-year-old Karen and Andrew, who's four. After he married Mrs. Thomas (now Mrs. Brewer), they adopted Emily Mich.e.l.le, a two-year-old from Vietnam. Then Nannie, Kristy's grandmother, moved in to help look after everybody. When Karen and Andrew are living at the big house (they call their mom's house the little house), which is every other month, there are ten people at the Brewer mansion. It's a good thing it's so huge.

But anyway, in the beginning, when the dub was formed, Kristy and Claudia and Stacey and I were neighbors. We decided to hold our meetings at Claud's because she has a phone in her room and - are you ready for this? - it's not just an extension, it's her very own phone line.

Kristy became president because the dub was her idea and because she's a real leader. (Some people would say she's loud and bossy, but I prefer to call her strong-willed.) We can count on Kristy to be at every meeting in her jeans, sneakers, and a turtleneck s.h.i.+rt. She usually wears her baseball cap placed firmly on her brown hair, which is pulled into a ponytail.

Since we were holding meetings at Claudia's, we elected her vice-president. Claud does a lot of things for the club, such as pick up calls when the dub's not in session and supply us with snacks. She is also our resident artist and all-around cool, creative person. In the looks category, I would say that Claudia is gorgeous with her s.h.i.+ny jet black hair and perfect dear complexion.

Claudia does have a couple of flaws. (Don't we all?) One, she is a major junk food addict. I'm not kidding. She stashes cookies and candy bars all over her room. And two, although she is very smart, schoolwork is Qau-dia's nemesis. She can paint a picture of douds soaring over a summer landscape with her eyes dosed, but ask her to diagram a sentence and she freezes up completely. At one point her parents were so concerned about her falling behind in her studies that they asked her to consider quitting the BSC. It was awful. Fortunately, Claudia pulled her grades up so she didn't have to quit. But we understand that, for Claudia, homework has to come first. Stacey McGill, who is a real math whiz, was our first treasurer. She and Claudia are a lot alike. Both have the absolute coolest dothes - not because they're rich and can afford to buy a million outfits, but because they have a real sense of style.

Claudia will go to a used clothing store and buy an old black vest, a beat-up derby, and an old-fas.h.i.+oned collarless s.h.i.+rt for a few dollars. Then she'll add some lace and beads to the vest to make it extra funky. She'll make a sequined headband for the derby and belt the big white s.h.i.+rt over some wild leggings and voild! She looks like a million dollars.

Stacey's style is just as cool, but a little more sophisticated and sleek. I think it comes from the fact that she lived in New York City for such a long time. She grew up there. Stacey also acts a little more grown-up than the rest of us because she's had to deal with some serious problems in her life, the biggest one being her diabetes. Stacey's body can't process sugar, so she has to give herself daily shots of insulin. Can you imagine sticking yourself with a needle? Ew! I just couldn't do it.

Stacey and Claudia used to be best friends. Unfortunately, Stacey's no longer in the club, which makes me sad just thinking about it. I mean, we have all been such close friends and have gone through so much together, it just doesn't feel right for her not to be in the BSC. Here's what happened: A number of us have boyfriends. Kristy has Bart Taylor (though she would never officially call him her boyfriend). Bart is this boy in the neighborhood who coaches a softball team for kids, like Kristy's team, the Krushers. And as I said, I have Logan. Well, Stacey's seeing this guy named Robert Brewster, but her attachment to him is different. She decided that he meant more to her than the BSC or any of our friends.h.i.+ps did, so she quit our dub. Before she did, a lot of harsh words were said by everyone, which I think ,we all regret. (I know I do.) But one of the things Stacey said that really sticks in my mind is that she felt we were too babyish for her. That hurt. I hope we can work it out someday, but for now, Stacey is not in the club. So Dawn, who's usually our alternate officer (that's the person who takes over the duties of an officer who can't make a meeting), is now serving as dub treasurer, which she winces at because math is not her strong suit.

I was voted dub secretary because I have the best handwriting in the group and because I am a very organized person. Believe me, you have to be organized in order to do this job. You see, I keep track of everyone's schedules - when they go to ballet da.s.s, or a Frendi dub meeting, or to the orthodontist. I know when Kristy's Krushers hold their practices, and when Claudia's art cla.s.s has an exhibition.

Besides knowing all of our personal schedules, I schedule every single baby-sitting job. When a client calls, we jot down the important information - who, when, where, how many children, and so on - and then I check the record book to see which of our club members is free. If the record book were wrong, things could get pretty crazy. This may sound like bragging, but I'm proud to say that I have never made a mistake.

Mallory Pike and Jessica Ramsey joined our dub later and are the BSC's junior officers. We call them that because they are eleven and in the sixth grade, and they're not allowed to baby-sit at night, except for their own families.

Besides being best friends, they are totally horse crazy. They love horse movies, The Black Stallion and Black Beauty being among their favorites, and horse books, especially the ones written by Marguerite Henry. Neither of them has ever owned a horse, but they dream about it.

Both girls have special talents and big dreams for the future. Mal would like to be a children's book author and ill.u.s.trator someday. (She's off to a good start, too, having won best all-around fiction for the sixth grade on Young Authors' Day.) Jessi, with her beautiful long legs and graceful body, is a ballet dancer. She's danced leading roles in several productions and hopes to dance with a major company like the New York City Ballet one day. I'm certain she'll do it, too.

Though they have a lot in common, Jessi and Mal are also very different. First of all, Jessi is black and Mallory is white. Jessi has two siblings: Becca, who's eight and a half, and her baby brother Squirt (his real name, John Philip Ramsey, Jr., is awfully big for such a little guy).

Mallory has seven brothers and sisters. Mallory is the oldest (she's eleven), followed by the triplets, Byron, Adam, and Jordan, who are ten. Then comes nine-year-old Vanessa, eight-year-old Nicky, Margo, who's seven, and last, but certainly not least, five-year-old Claire. They all have reddish-brown hair and blue eyes, and three of them - Mallory, Vanessa, and Nicky - wear gla.s.ses. (Mal longs to trade in her frames for a pair of contacts, but her parents say she has to wait until she's older.) I think I've covered everyone except Shannon Kilbourne, who has taken over Dawn's old job of alternate officer. Shannon lives across the street from Kristy. When those two first met, they didn't like each other at all. Kristy thought Shannon was a big sn.o.b, but it was all a misunderstanding. Kristy soon found out that Shannon was very nice, and that she was also a great baby-sitter. She invited Shannon to become an a.s.sociate member of the BSC, like Logan. Despite her heavy involvement with activities at her school, Shan-19 non has been doing a lot of filling in lately - first, when Dawn was in California, and now, with Stacey out of the dub.

Speaking of Stacey, Claudia and Dawn were having a pretty intense discussion about her. I don't know how they got from Babar to Stacey and Robert, but in the course of a half hour we usually manage to talk about lots of things, as well as take calls from clients, which is our main reason for meeting.

”Oh, Stacey saw me, all right,” Dawn was saying. ”She started to wave but then she looked away really fast.”

Kristy looked cross. ”I guess we should probably think about a permanent replacement.”

”Oh, not yet,” Claudia pleaded. ”Let's give it a little more time. I mean, we're okay, aren't we?”

Everyone looked at me, probably because I'm the one who does the scheduling. ”We're fine,” I said. ”Especially since Shannon has made herself available to help out more. She doesn't get to every meeting, but she gets to most of them.”

Shannon gave us a rea.s.suring smile. ”I'm here whenever you need me.”

There was a collective sigh of relief. None of us even wanted to think about replacing Stacey. It was too uncomfortable.

”Okay!” Kristy dapped her hands together. ”Back to Babar. Why don't we talk to our charges about the Babar campaign this week? Find out if they're interested.”

”Why don't we do a survey?” I suggested.

”I could divide up the client list in no time.”

Kristy gave me a thumbs-up sign. I pulled some paper out of the back of the record book, and started writing furiously.

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